“The company justifies its secrecy in many ways, having variously claimed legal restrictions, business secrets, security and privacy protections to excuse its opacity. But Jonathan Albright, whose late 2016 research on the “fake news” propaganda ecosystem outlined how propaganda websites track and target users, thinks the current moment may be a turning point for online giants like Facebook.

“Now that it has run directly into something that possibly affected the outcome of the election — but they can’t determine how — this may be their era of accountability,” said Albright, the director of research at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

“A Columbia University social media analyst has published his findings about the reach and engagement achieved by Russia-linked Facebook pages during the 2016 election.

The research, released on Thursday by Jonathan Albright, a propaganda and misinformation expert who heads Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, shines a light on the extent to which US voters were exposed to, and interacted with, politically divisive content pushed by Russia between 2015-2016.

Albright analyzed Facebook pages like “Blacktivists,” “Being Patriotic,” and “Secured Borders” that were shut down by the company as part of its purge of “inauthentic” accounts linked to Russia. He also looked at “Heart of Texas,” LGBT United, and “Muslims of America.”

These are the only six pages, so far, that Facebook has acknowledged have ties to Russia. The company shut down 470 pages linked to Russia’s shadowy Internet Research Agency early last month.

Albright used Facebook’s own analytics tool, CrowdTangle, to assess the data, and downloaded the last 500 posts each account shared before being shut down. He also made public the full text of the posts, which were shared over 340 million times between the six accounts.”

“New details also emerged about Russia’s extensive use of Facebook to sow discord and spread misinformation during the election. A Columbia University social media analyst published research on the topic and found that Russian propaganda may have been shared billions of times on Facebook.

“Facebook says some groups tried to use its platform to sway the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. In a case study of the 2016 presidential election, the company said it found several instances of “information operations,” its term for governments and organizations who attempt to sway political opinion by spreading fake news and other nefarious tactics. The case study was included in Facebook’s white paper on “information operations.” It also detailed ways it was combating “fake news” and other misinformation spread by adding new technologies and creating more security features.” CNBC.com

Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafortand deputy Rick Gates, arrested, worked on behalf of the Kremlin to influence elections in Ukraine.

Facebook has an ugly history of making Kremlin-friendly moves. September 27, 2017

“Facebook’s inability to tackle Russia’s troll problem in Ukraine reached a fever pitch in 2014 and 2015, with several Ukrainians writing into Zuckerberg’s May 2015 call for question submissions at a Facebook town hall. The top 20 questions worldwide were about Russian trolling of the website’s report button to silence Ukrainian accounts. The top question received 45,000 likes. And even Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko asked the company to create a Ukrainian Facebook office to deal with Ukraine. The request was rebuffed.

Nine months—and a torrent of public criticism—later, Facebook announced in September (2017) that it had identified several Kremlin operations disguised as American Facebook groups. After some initial resistance, company representatives shared some of their findings with congressional intelligence committees and with special prosecutor Robert Mueller. (North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who heads the Senate intelligence committee, said on Monday that his panel has not received a complete report from Facebook, however.)

As The Daily Beast reported, the Facebook pages, with names like “Secured Borders” and “Being Patriotic,” created real-life pro-Trump rallies on American soil, established fake “voter fraud hotlines” on Election Day, and wrote posts with divisive, racist, and anti-immigrant sentiments.Facebook’s less-than-urgent responses to these examples of an autocratic foreign power interfering in the domestic affairs of a democratic country shouldn’t be altogether surprising, however. The company has a track record of acquiescence to the demands of authoritarian regimes. Rohingya activists told The Daily Beast that the social network had been taking down their posts about the intensifying ethnic cleansing in Burma. In 2016, Facebook also developed a censorship tool to appease the Chinese government and allow the company to suppress posts on a regional basis, The New York Timesreported.

The company likewise bowed to Turkey’s demands of censoring images of the prophet Muhammad to get access to that market, just weeks after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

And in Russia itself, the social network blocked a page in support of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most vocal challenger. When it debuted the Facebook gay pride reaction button, users in Russia and other anti-gay countries were unable to access it.

Navalny later co-signed a petition demanding Facebook change their approach to an “army of shills on state payroll” blocking Ukrainian posts on the site. The petition racked up almost 10,000 signatures.

It’s a sea change for the social network once hailed as a key enabler of the Arab Spring.

On Tuesday, Russian authorities threatened to block access to Facebook in the country if it doesn’t begin to store data of Russian citizens on Russian servers. Russia has already banned LinkedIn for not complying with the same data storage requirements.

The Ukrainians who felt silenced by Facebook’s moderation system at the height of tensions with Russia are still grasping for answers about what happened to their messages—and who was to blame for their disappearance.”

“The users whose opinions differ from those of the Kremlin are blocked, though they do not violate any community rules,” one user wrote on Zuckerberg’s call for questions.” Daily Beast

As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants NY TimesInternal documents show that the social network gave Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify and others far greater access to people’s data than it has disclosed. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, at a Senate hearing in April. Internal Facebook records describe data-sharing deals that benefited more than 150 companies. By Gabriel J.X. Dance, Michael LaForgia and Nicholas Confessore. December 18, 2018 “Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages. The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier. The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier. In an interview, Steve Satterfield, Facebook’s director of privacy and public policy, said none of the partnerships violated users’ privacy or the F.T.C. agreement. The F.T.C. this spring opened a new inquiry into Facebook’s compliance with the consent order, while the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are also investigating the company.” The New York Times interviewed more than 60 people, including former employees of Facebook and its partners, former government officials and privacy advocates. The Times also reviewed more than 270 pages of Facebook’s internal documents and performed technical tests and analysis to monitor what information was being passed between Facebook and partner devices and websites.

A federal investigation into Facebook’s sharing of data with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica has broadened to focus on the actions and statements of the tech giant and now involves multiple agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the official inquiries.

Representatives for the FBI, the SEC and the Federal Trade Commission have joined the Department of Justice in its inquiries about the two companies and the sharing of personal information of 71 million Americans, suggesting the wide-ranging nature of the investigation, said five people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a probe that remains incomplete.

Facebook discovered in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica, which later worked for the Trump campaign, had obtained Facebook data to create voter profiles. Yet Facebook didn’t disclose that information to the public until March, on the eve of the publication of news reports about the matter.

The questioning from federal investigators centers on what Facebook knew three years ago and why the company didn’t reveal it at the time to its users or investors, as well as any discrepancies in more recent accounts, among other issues, according to these people. The Capitol Hill testimony of Facebook officials, including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, also is being scrutinized as part of the probe, said people familiar with the federal inquiries.

Facebook confirmed it had received questions from the federal agencies and said it was sharing information and cooperating in other ways. “We are cooperating with officials in the U.S., U.K. and beyond,” said Facebook spokesman Matt Steinfeld. “We’ve provided public testimony, answered questions, and pledged to continue our assistance as their work continues.”

The Department of Justice and the other federal agencies declined to comment. The FTC in March disclosed it was investigating Facebook over possible privacy violations.

The SEC has described the investigation as “The Facebook Matter,” according to two people who have seen related documents.

Cambridge Analytica has closed operations since the scandal erupted and an inquiry to its press office was returned as undeliverable.

The New York Times previously reported that the Justice Department was investigating Cambridge Analytica, which had also worked with Republican candidates besides Donald Trump. But the extent of federal investigation into the actions and statements of Facebook itself has not previously been revealed.

“The fact that the Justice Department, the FBI, the SEC and the FTC are sitting down together does raise serious concerns,” said David Vladeck, former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection and now a Georgetown Law professor. He said he had no direct knowledge of the investigation but said the combination of agencies involved “does raise all sorts of red flags.”

The expanding federal probe creates new risk to Facebook as it struggles to emerge from nearly two years of scandal, beginning with the role its platform played in disseminating Russian disinformation efforts during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Facebook’s controversies were beginning to cool this year before the news broke about Cambridge Analytica. In 2015, Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan, working with Cambridge Analytica, used a quiz app to gather data on those who took the survey and their friends. The Facebook data-gathering feature, called an API, was a common technique at the time for assembling massive data troves for analysis, including names, hometowns, work histories, religious affiliations and personal preferences.

Facebook has portrayed that data gathering as an improper use because it wasn’t used for academic purposes. But Cambridge Analytica and Kogan have said they did nothing wrong and that many others used the same feature. Kogan has maintained that he got permission to share the data when he changed the terms of service of the app, from a strictly academic contract to a contract allowing broader commercial use. He also said he notified Facebook of the change to his terms of service.

At the time, when made aware of the data Cambridge Analytica had obtained, Facebook investigated the analytics firm and Kogan. Facebook said it ordered them to delete the data and promise not to do it again.

Facebook has not said whether that data was used by Cambridge Analytica’s client, the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica said it deleted the data at Facebook’s request.

Facebook stopped allowing app developers to gain information about a person’s Facebook friends in 2014 and 2015. It continued to share some data with a select groups of app developers and with device and software makers, including Apple, Amazon, Samsung and Huawei, before announcing it would curtail that amid a new wave of news reports this month.

Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in March, Facebook has audited thousands of apps that had access to data during the looser period before 2015. The company has suspended 200 apps, and has further restricted access to data for all developers using Facebook and its sister service, Instagram.

In March, the company’s stock dropped more than 13 percent in the week after the revelations. Financial regulators pay close attention to sudden moves in a company’s stock price.

Many details about the federal probe remain unknown, including whether investigators are considering criminal charges or civil penalties for the companies involved.

But investigators seem particularly focused on what data Facebook allowed to be collected from its platform and under what conditions, as well as what Facebook told the public at the time of the data sharing and during recent congressional hearings, said these people. These discrepancies came up during Zuckerberg’s Capitol Hill hearings in April. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) held up an exhibit with Kogan’s broader terms of service and asked Zuckerberg if he had seen them before. Zuckerberg said no.

The probe by the FTC, which oversees consumer privacy, concerns whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree regarding its privacy practices. An FTC fine could potentially reach into the billions of dollars.”

FTC opens investigation into Facebook after Cambridge Analytica scrapes millions of users’ personal informationFacebook targeted in federal investigation of Cambridge Analytica Facebook’s actions and public statements are facing inquiries from several federal agencies regarding the mishandling of millions of users’ personal data.(Elyse Samuels, Patrick Martin/The Washington Post) ByTony Rommand Craig Timberg March 20, 2018 “About 270,000 users downloaded Cambridge Analytica’s app. But the firm was able to obtain personal information about their friends, who likely had no knowledge that their data was being collected. Roughly 50 million people may have been affected.”

It is called “The Giving Pledge”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife have merely transferred money from one pocket to another, not rally donated a fortune to charity.

“Zuckerberg and Chan, by contrast, have created as the repository of their donations a private company, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative L.L.C. Like all privately held companies, this one is a black box. It is not obligated to report on its activities, which, legally, can include lobbying, owning for-profit companies. and making no donations whatsoever,

Zuckerberg and Chan insist on this arrangement because they want to be free to lobby, to invest in for-profit enterprises doing what they regard as noble work, and otherwise be able to affect public policy and social outcomes in whatever way they chose. That’s perfectly legal. Just don’t call it a charity.”

But Zuckerberg wants his CZI “Charity” to have joint projects with Facebook using Facebook employees. Are those projects ones which affect public policy and social outcomes? Data Analytics? Elections?

“Mark Zuckerberg wanted Facebook employees to work on projects for his philanthropic fund, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, but was forced to abandon the idea early last year after opposition from senior executives.

Zuckerberg’s desire for his two companies to “undertake joint projects,” and to allow Facebook employees to work on non-Facebook related projects was discussed during a February 2016 meeting of the social network’s board of directors, according to court documents from a recent lawsuit between Facebook and a group of public shareholders.

At the heart of the lawsuit was The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which Zuckerberg founded with his wife Priscilla Chan in late 2015 as a way to give away 99% of their roughly $70 billion fortune. The new class of non-voting shares was intended to give Zuckerberg the ability to sell the majority of his stock to fund his philanthropic interests without losing voting control of Facebook. Zuckerberg currently controls roughly 60% of the voting power at Facebook.

Facebook abruptly abandoned the stock restructuring plan last week on the eve of trial, effectively ending the lawsuit and saving Zuckerberg from having to testify in open court.

Zuckerberg still plans to pour up to $12 billion of his Facebook stock over the next 18 months into the philanthropic fund, which is operated independently from Facebook with its own staff.

Another revelation from the discovery process was that Zuckerberg has seriously considered holding some form of public office. Facebook’s stock reclassification proposal included a clause that would have let Zuckerberg serve indefinitely in government while still maintaining control of the company.”

“In an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session on the discussion website Reddit this week, a group of Chan Zuckerberg scientists said they’re working on the Human Cell Atlas project. That’s a global effort to map all 30 trillion cells in the human body, similar to how the human genome project identified genes. Its ambitions and deep pockets aren’t the only things that make the Chan Zuckerberg organization unique.” CNBC

FACEBOOK FUNDING: Following the Money

Current Russian Prime Minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev, was Putin’s campaign manager in 2000 and appointed First Deputy Prime Minister in November 2005, overseeing Gazprom as Chairman of the Board. Wikipedia

Subsidiaries of Gazprom include the Steel Mills run by Alisher B. Usmanovbefore spinning off as Gazmetal renamed Metalloinvest

“Zynga could be called the Google of the gaming world having acquired seven companies in the last seven months, including Bonfire Studios, Challenge Games, Conduit Labs, Dextrose AG, Unoh Games and XPD.” Ad Age December 2, 2010

D.S.T. invest $50m and Goldman Sachs pooled $450m into new structure allowing many to act as one, in secrecy Business Insider January 3, 2011

“Now the Russian-led investments of less than $900 million, made through two entities, Mail.ru and Digital Sky Technologies, will be worth more than $6 billion, based on the midpoint of the $34 to $38 price range that Facebook’s bankers have set for the stock.”

[Alisher B. Usmanov] “58, who got his start in the plastic bag business and was reared in a remote part of the Soviet Union, said he learned the benefits of acting boldly during the ruble crisis of 1998.“I have a theory of crisis that you must employ crisis to create additional margin,” he said this week in a telephone interview. “You need to understand when the moment of growth is coming, and invest just before that.”

Mr. Zuckerberg turned to the Russian investors in 2009 at a meeting quietly brokered by Goldman Sachs…Mr. Usmanov, who is close to the Kremlin, has not hesitated to use his media properties to support the government. Last December, he fired the publisher and editor at one of Russia’s most respected newsmagazines, Kommersant Vlast, after it published detailed accounts of bald falsification in national elections…

The precise details of the Russian ownership in Facebook are difficult to assess. The investments were made over two years though the Russian Internet company Mail.ruand the investment fund Digital Sky Technologies, also known as D.S.T., which is run by the venture capitalist Yuri Milner. Although Mr. Usmanov was the leading backer, other investors were involved.

Mr. Milner met with Zuckerberg in 2009 before the first investment, though Mr. Usmanov has never met him.

Mr. Milner said his focus on social networking reflected insights gained from watching the Russian Internet market develop in the last few years. In 2005, D.S.T. began investing in Internet companies in Russia and Eastern Europe…

Mr. Usmanov said that, after the series of investments from 2009 until 2011, he and Mr. Milner owned about 9 percent of Facebook at one point, but now own about 6 percent and will hold about 4.5 percent after the initial public offering.

Mr. Usmanov earned his billions in the post-Soviet business world, managing steel mill subsidiaries for Gazprom before they were spun off as his own businesses, Gazmetal, later renamed Metalloinvest. Mr. Usmanov has said he took on debt in this transaction and others acquiring iron ore mines in Russia.

He said he would use money from investors who buy his shares in the Facebook I.P.O. to invest and pay down debt at his other Russian businesses.

This year, Russia’s second-largest cellphone company, MegaFon, which Mr. Usmanov partly owns, is expected to issue shares in London in its own I.P.O.

From his work with Gazprom, Mr. Usmanov is said to be close to Russia’s former president and current prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former chairman of the Gazprom board. His ties to the Kremlin and Facebook have stirred concerns that he might influence the company’s policies in subtle ways to appease governments in markets where Facebook is also an important tool of political dissent, such as Russia.

Because he does not vote Facebook shares, however, Mr. Usmanov has no direct influence on policies for the site in Russia.” NY Times

NY Times Leaked files show that a state-controlled bank in Moscow helped to fuel Yuri Milner’s ascent in Silicon Valley, where the Russia investigation has put tech companies under scrutiny. By JESSE DRUCKER November 5, 2017

“A big investor in Mr. Milner’s Facebook deal received financing from Gazprom Investholding, another government-controlled financial institution, according to the documents. They include a cache of records from the Bermuda law firm Appleby that were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and reviewed by The Times in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Ultimately, Mr. Milner’s companies came to own more than 8 percent of Facebook and 5 percent of Twitter, helping earn him a place on various lists of the world’s most powerful business people. His companies sold those holdings several years ago, but he retains investments in several other large technology companies and continues to make new deals. Among Mr. Milner’s current investments is a real estate venture founded and partly owned by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser.”

“The idea to infiltrate Facebook came to Bannon from Chris Gacek, a former congressional staffer who is now an official at the Family Research Council, which lobbies against abortion and many LGBT rights.

The secret attempt to find bias in Facebook’s hiring process reflects longstanding conservative fears that Facebook and the other tech giants are run by liberals who suppress right-wing views both internally and on their dominant platforms. Facebook’s powerful COO, Sheryl Sandberg, is a longtime Democratic donor who endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. In May 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to meet with dozens of prominent conservatives after a report surfaced that the company’s employees prevented right-leaning stories from reaching the platform’s “trending” section.

The company has sought to deflect such criticism through hiring. Its vice president of global public policy, Joel Kaplan, was a deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush White House. And more recently, Facebook has made moves to represent the Breitbart wing of the Republican party on its policy team, tapping a former top staffer to Attorney General Jeff Sessions to be the director of executive branch public policy in May.

The job listing Gacek attached in his email to Bannon was for a public policy manager position in Washington, DC, working on the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messenger. The job description included such responsibilities as “Develop and execute WhatsApp’s global policy strategy” and “Represent WhatsApp in meetings with government officials and elected members.” It sought candidates with law degrees and 10 years of public policy experience.”

“Sandy Luff, who last worked for Sessions as his Legislative Director when he was serving in the Senate, will be Director of Executive Branch Public Policy at the tech giant. She also worked with the Trump transition team.

Facebook is staffing up its policy communications team, too. It has hired Nu Wexler, a veteran Democratic communications staffer who is well-known to the tech press as Twitter’s former spokesman on policy issues.”